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To: Duke who wrote (792)	12/22/1997 4:53:00 PM
From: Tom Hua	Read Replies (7) \| Respond to of 1629

Cisco Will Acquire LightSpeed, Taking Aim at Telecom Market Dow Jones Newswires Bolstering its lineup of offerings for telecommunications companies, networking-equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. said Monday that it agreed to acquire LightSpeed International Inc., a developer of communications software, for about $160 million in stock. Cisco, of San Jose, Calif., the world's largest maker of networking equipment, said it will exchange between 2.7 and 3.3 million shares to buy LightSpeed, of Sterling, Va. Cisco also said it expects to take a charge of between 11 cents and 15 cents a share in its second quarter to account for the deal. Cisco expects to complete the purchase by next month. Lightspeed was formed in 1995 by three former workers at Concert, the international telecom venture between British Telecommunications PLC and MCI Communications Corp. The three saw a big potential market for software that makes different telecommunications and computer formats for communications compatible. LightSpeed has developed voice-conversion and call-control software that allows different phone and communications systems to work together in a "seamless" fashion, Cisco said. The company said the software should lower costs by helping to link systems based on PBX wireless-communications gear as well as networks based on the ATM, or asynchronous transfer mode, and Internet protocol, or IP, formats. Cisco in July agreed to acquire DSL technology and products that increase the data-carrying capacity of traditional copper telephone wires from Integrated Network Corp. for about $125 million. In June, Cisco agreed to buy Ardent Communications Corp. in a deal then valued at about $156 million. Ardent specializes in technologies based on the speedy frame-relay and ATM formats for integrating the transmission of voice, video and data. Those and other deals appear focused on better serving telecommunications carriers; market watchers see Cisco as chief among a group of networking firms picking up new business from such carriers, as the carriers need more specialized equipment, including networking technology, than ever before. Cisco's equipment -- routers, hubs, switches and the software that controls them -- are the most popular tools that companies and Internet-service providers use to manage electronic traffic in computer networks. About 85% of the routers used to decipher and direct data traffic on the Internet are made by Cisco. Cisco's rivals aren't sitting still, however; telecommunications-equipment firms are rapidly moving to become bigger players in the networking field. Lucent Technologies Inc. has recently shelled out $850 million to buy a networking firms Prominet Corp. and Livingston Enterprises Inc., and earlier this month Finnish telecommunications company Oy Nokia announced plans to acquire Ipsilon Networks Inc., the pioneer of a networking-technology effort called IP switching, for $120 million. Meanwhile, telecommunications-equipment and networking firms including L.M. Ericsson, Lucent, Northern Telecom, 3Com Corp. Siemens AG and Newbridge Networks Corp., have invested in Juniper Networks Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up that has ambitious plans to develop key components for high-speed networking devices in a bid to challenge Cisco.